{"id":216,"date":"2012-07-25T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T21:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=216"},"modified":"2012-07-25T17:22:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T21:22:00","slug":"flaws-and-all-medicaid-can-improve-adults-health-shots-health-blog-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=216","title":{"rendered":"Flaws And All, Medicaid Can Improve Adults’ Health : Shots – Health Blog : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flaws And All, Medicaid Can Improve Adults’ Health : Shots – Health Blog : NPR<\/a><\/p>\n

But a study just published online<\/a> by the New England Journal of Medicine<\/i> adds to a growing body of evidence that Medicaid, in fact, does improve the health of those it covers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>The study, whose Harvard-affiliated authors include one currently advising the Obama administration<\/a> and one who worked for President George W. Bush<\/a>, compared three states (New York, Maine, and Arizona) that expanded Medicaid coverage to childless, non-disabled adults in recent years to three neighboring states that did not. Those adults will be the primary beneficiaries of the expansion envisioned<\/a> under the Affordable Care Act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It found that Medicaid expansions were associated with “a significant reduction in adjusted all-cause mortality,” as well as decreased rates of care being delayed due to cost, and more people reporting themselves to be in “excellent” or “very good” health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now if that sounds obvious, it’s not. “Prior to Oregon, we didn’t have very good data for adults” and Medicaid, lead author Benjamin Sommers<\/a> told Shots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By Oregon, he’s referring to a landmark study<\/a> from last year that was able to compare adults who got Medicaid coverage through a lottery with those who didn’t. Such a randomized trial is almost unheard of in health policy research because it most cases it would be unethical. The Oregon study was facilitated by state budget considerations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One reason critics of Medicaid have been able to maintain the debate is that some earlier studies<\/a> have, indeed, found that people with Medicaid, particularly adults, sometimes had worse medical outcomes than those who didn’t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sommers says that should hardly come as a shock. “We know Medicaid is designed to cover the sickest of the sick” he says. “So it’s not surprising that people who have Medicaid do worse than those who don’t.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sommers says this new study, which includes some of the same team working on the Oregon data, complements that one. “While it’s not a randomized study,” he said, it has a larger sample (more than 68,000 people) and examines a longer period of time (five years before and after the Medicaid expansion).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flaws And All, Medicaid Can Improve Adults’ Health : Shots – Health Blog : NPR But a study just published online by the New England Journal of Medicine adds to … Continue reading “Flaws And All, Medicaid Can Improve Adults’ Health : Shots – Health Blog : NPR”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-disparities","category-medicaid"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}